Skies On Fire
by laughingmagician
Summary: Nuclear war proceeded Voldemort's attempt to rule the world forcing him & Harry Potter into hiding.  In a post-apocalyptic world where wizards are known & hunted, Draco & Hermione run into each other for the first time since the bombs fell.
1. Introduction

**Title**: Skies On Fire

**Chapter**: 1/?

**Setting**: au!post-Hogwarts

**Author**: laughingmagician

**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything from the world of Harry Potter, and I commend J. for her brilliant idea!

**Rating**: Mature

**Pairing**: Draco/Hermione

**Warnings**: tbd

**Intro**

_I don't think anyone could foresee what would happen. We were too involved in our own war to give notice to the rest of the world. Magic had a way of setting you apart from the rest of humanity back then, and if we're being honest here, the wizarding world at large was entirely too sure of itself. _

_It was a weapon we had not expected, a war we had not even been part of, but then the same could be said about them with ours. Two peoples fighting two very different wars at the same time. One had to dominate the other. There are never two winners, someone must always lose._

_Muggle nuclear war got to us before Voldemort could. The skies were lit on fire and all I'd known changed. _

_I had nothing familiar to me left._

_When the dust settled only the strong had survived. Some would argue that magic gave us an advantage, but our death toll was just as bad as theirs. With both Harry Potter and Voldemort missing-neither presumed dead given their history-we tried to move on. But there weren't enough of us._

_That boundary between muggles and wizards had been destroyed in the bombs too, and piecing this world back together was going to take all of us._

_So I adopted some of their ways, but I never forgot my own. Wizards became something very real, but a whispered rumor across the barren landscape. 'If they had magic, why hadn't they saved us?' people would ask. We were discovered and hated all in the same moment._

_To be a wizard or a witch was to be hunted for what you were._


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"_**Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." **_**~ The Shawshank Redemption; **_**Stephen King**_

Dust settling in the horizon whispered of once heavily overgrown forests. But that old world was gone now, replaced with one that was abandoned like a young child, relearning everything it had ever known. With technology destroyed and most of humanity with it, the population turned once more to superstition and common sense. Automatic weapons, suddenly rarer than gold, were replaced with old, _reliable _six-shooters.

In this world a man is never quite the legend he is made out to be.

Belts draped on either side of his hips, the gunslinger gazed towards the sunrise. He saw it in ways few men were able. He saw the _magic _in it, beyond the light, beyond the colors. His blue eyes glowed a faint pink as the red sky reflected off of them.

David had a long way to go before he reached his destination, but he had to know if the rumors were true, if the building still stood.

The only thing in his way was thousands of miles, the Forbidden City, and anyone he came across along the path. This new world knew nothing of kindness or altruism. It knew only survival.

He started walking again, the sun hot on the back of his neck. He'd had a hat once, but it had long ago been shot off. At twenty-four, David already wore the face of a tired man. Five years the world had been like this. Fire years of relearning how to survive in a world that was unfamiliar in the most difficult way.

If he was going to make this trip, he would need a horse. Gasoline, not only rare but outlawed, was not an option, and animals were always more dependable than a machine in the end. An animal could move with you, could act on instinct and protect you.

Or bite you on the ass.

And that was how things were now-either one way or the other, no in between. Everything was complicated and nothing made sense anymore.

Walking into the barn, his hands moved to the pistols on his hips. It was a casual move meant to be more of a reminder than a threat, and he knew he was being watched before the grimy voice even asked him what he wanted.

For a moment, David stood there in silence, eyes scanning the dark inner walls of the barn. When they stilled on the fat barn owner near the haystack in the back, his eyes narrowed a bit.

"I need a horse." When he spoke, David's voice was harsh, _forced_. He spent most of his time completely alone by choice these days, and talking was hardly necessary when you had no one to bloody interact with. But his voice, while strained, also spoke a silent warning of danger. He was not to be fucked with. The hands on his guns had learned to be fast over the last few years, and if the guns failed him, he had another weapon he could easily use simply risking being caught with it.

The barn keeper walked around the haystack towards him, rubbing his dirty hands on his shirt along the way, and belched before commenting in a thick Irish accent, "E'eryone wan's a 'orse these days. They're not cheap."

This wasn't news to David, he'd known that when walking through the barn doors. "Do you take gold?" he asked the disgusting man.

The barn owner started laughing in a way that made the disgusting rolls of his stomach shake and quiver, and David had to wonder how on earth he maintained such an obese figure in a world where you usually had to hunt for your food.

"Show me this gold o' yours an' we'll talk," he replied.

David carefully moved one hand away from his gun, his precise movements aimed to keep the barn owner from thinking he was a threat at this particular moment. Reaching into his pocket, he felt a sharp bite at the tip of his index finger before pulling the tiny pieces of jagged gold out and holding them in his palm for the barn keeper to see. The fat man immediately took a few steps away from him.

"Those are…"

"_Gold_," David insisted. And they were gold, but it wasn't what they were made of that had the other man so horrified and moving away from the gunslinger in front of him. It was the fact that this particular gold had come from the cavity fillings of a human being, and there was still blood stained around the sharper edges.

His own finger bled heavily now, as if to claim the small cut was worse off than David knew it was. He ignored it. Blood dried and cuts closed on their own more often than not.

For a moment they stared at each other, the barn keeper considering the fallout from dealing with such a man and the consequences from refusing to. His eyes constantly shifted for a quick glance at the guns on his belt before hurrying back to those piercing blue eyes that _demanded _his attention. David was nearly about to leave, thinking the man would not do business with him because of the gold's source, when he finally spoke.

"Which 'orse do you want?" He reached out, holding his own hand beneath David's, waiting for the gunslinger to turn his and give up the gold. Which he did.

"That one will do," he commented, pointing towards a pinto near the back. The horse was more white than black with rare splotches of what had the appearance of ink every so often on its coat. Had he been taking a shorter trip, David might have chosen the other horse a few stalls down, but the sun was brutal on a black coat, and he was not going to make whatever horse carried him that far suffer more than it had to.

His days of torturing animals were long over. There was no room for bullies in this new world.

"He's yours," the barn keeper told David. "Saddle's on the wall behind him." He was now busy counting his gold, no longer paying attention to the gunslinger.

David walked over to the horse, reaching a hand up to calm him when he stared at him through wide, fear-filled eyes. In a quiet, soothing voice-a drastic difference to the harshness he'd used when speaking to another human being-he whispered, "_Aequus_."

Instantly, the animal calmed and stared at him through trusting eyes. There was a connection between man and animal which was rarely understood by third parties, and David's mouth curved at the corners ever so gently almost as if to smile. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the side of the horses head, whispering the word again and again until he realized he was being watch.

Opening his eyes, he turned to look at the barn keeper. The fat man pointed towards his arm. "Lift your sleeve," he demanded.

The gunslinger stood there and looked at him casually. "Why?" David asked him calmly, making no move to do any such thing.

"You're no' what you appear to be, are ya?" he demanded. And that was the moment where David knew he couldn't let the other man live. It was too risky, and judging by his attitude so far it wouldn't really be all that big of a loss to the world.

He drew and fired before the barn keeper realized there was a hole straight through his forehead. In fact, he had just enough time to glance up before he fell backwards, bleeding all over the hay. David glanced at his horse, who remained calm.

Holstering the weapon, he glanced down to make sure the man was dead before moving away from him. "You'll get used to that bleedin' sound," he assured the horse with dry sarcasm. The animal blinked indifferently. "Now, what are we going to name you?" David asked, opening the stall door to walk around and get the saddle. While most men knew better than to move behind a horse, David knew this animal trusted him now. He had an advantage most men didn't.

He had the horse saddled and ready within fifteen minutes. David was used to an English saddle, but this Western-styled one would do the trick for now. When he climbed onto the animal's back he didn't even need to indicate that it was time to move-the animal sensed it and started trotting towards the sunrise.

This was just the beginning of a very long day.

* * *

><p>Hermione woke up covered in sweat, a chill moving across her body before she remembered where she was. Memories of dark times, times before the world had known about magic, rang through her head like aftershocks, and the young witch had to remind herself that the world she dreamt of no longer existed.<p>

But she missed it every day.

Dressing quickly in a sweater and a pair of jeans, she tucked her wand against her side, the handle firmly placed between her belt and jeans so that the length of it could be hidden beneath her sweater. She had learned decades ago to keep it there rather than up her sleeve. Sleeves were the first place they looked, and magic was forbidden, against the law.

She sighed, walking over to glance out the window. The Forbidden City loomed in the distance, a dark splotch against an otherwise brilliant sky. It had been London before the Day of Fire, but the Forbidden City hardly resembled the city of London she'd loved as a girl.

There it sat, a cold reminder that things could never go back.

Hermione flinched slightly at the warm hand that rested on her shoulder. "Nightmares again?" he asked her.

She hesitated before finally turning to face Oliver with a weak smile on her face. "I didn't mean to wake you…" she started apologetically.

"It's fine," he assured her, leaning forward to kiss her forehead gently.

A smile crossed her features as she looked at him gratefully. She really hadn't meant to wake him. Looking at him now, it was difficult to believe that this man standing in front of her had once been a Quidditch team captain. While Hermione had always thought him fit from afar it had taken a nuclear war and Ron's violent death to make anything of the girlish crush.

He was her life now.

Hermione had lost most of her friends and family that day, and then there had been Oliver, the smoke clearing as he made his way towards her. 'Harry's gone,' he'd told her. 'Harry and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named both are gone.'

'Are they dead?' Hermione had asked him, and he'd shook his head.

'Not dead, just gone.'

That had been the beginning of the end. Their world changed entirely that day, and as humanity learned of magic they also learned to hate it. They were in hiding now, forced to practice magic in secret if at all, and for a witch who had once been as dedicated as Hermione this was the most difficult change of all.

She had hope that Harry was still out there somewhere, but the awful logic in that was that Voldemort was too, connected as they were.

"It almost looks beautiful," she commented casually, turning back around to look out at the skyline of the fallen city. Oliver stepped forward, arms around her waist, and pulled her back to rest against him.

"Almost," he agreed sadly.


	3. Interlude 1

**Interlude**

_I suppose on some level I always knew that everything was different, but a creature of habit clings to what is left. Remnants of a ghost life that was now outlawed haunted my dreams. There were so many people I'd cared for in that life that were still unaccounted for. It was difficult to hold onto hope after all that had happened._

_I had once been best friends with two of the most important wizards to ever live. One had died violently, and the other had long been missing. In other words, as I made my way _alone_ into the center of what little was left of our town, I _knew_ better. _

_Sadly, this didn't stop me from going. We did, after all, need supplies._


	4. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"_**When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves." **_**- Invisible Monsters; **_**Chuck Palahniuk **_

"_WITCH_!" The town's merciless cries rang through his ears before David even saw the crowd gathered near a fountain. It was ironic that such a scene should play out in this day and age, but this was what humanity had reverted to. "She is a witch!"

The back of the crowd parted a bit when they noticed the gunslinger. Any man with a gun who knew how to use it was respected, and as soon as the rest caught on to why there was movement in the crowd, they parted as well, leaving him a pathway towards the girl.

David got to her in seven steps, pausing a foot away from her. He knelt down, studying the girl. One of her arms had been torn off, the mangled stub resting over the edge of the fountain stringy with arteries that refused to stop spitting her blood out into the water. There were parts of the world where water was precious and rare just as gold was here, but they were miles away, and no one gave a second thought to the red tainting it

A calloused hand moved to lift one of the girl's eyelids with his thumb. She was awake but barely so, and that in itself was a mercy David realized as he looked over the rest of her body. While it was apparent that she had been dragged into the town center by the now missing arm, the rest of her had not escaped tortures of different kinds.

The fingernails of her remaining hand had been torn away to reveal vulnerable nerves that were now caked with mud and blood. The girl's legs had been broken to prevent her from running away, and the way in which she breathed revealed that she had at least one punctured lung from a broken rib or two. The bruises that covered her body were new and still forming, and her eyes were swollen shut while her nose bled almost as freely as the stump of her torn arm. David imagined her hair had been blond before the blood soaked into it and forever dyed the strands red.

The stench of blood hung heavy in the air, like a fog after a warm summer rain. You couldn't escape it if you breathed. As gruesome as the scene itself was, the most horrifying part was what they had done with her wand.

David moved a hand down, fingertips gently touching the edges of the broken wand, the jagged bits of wood that stuck out of her throat. They had silenced her before she could cast any spells on them.

This was not an uncommon practice when finding a witch, but David had never seen it done like this. Usually the tongue was torn out, but in this case the throat had been completely mutilated. David wasn't sure how she was still alive at all.

"BURN HER!" Someone shouted from the crowd. "KILL THE WITCH!"

If David was bothered by their words at all, it didn't register on his expression. In fact, he showed no emotion whatsoever in that moment. One couldn't afford mercy for a witch.

Even if she appeared to only be a seven-year-old _child_.

Years of practice long before the Day of Fire had taught him to appear calm and indifferent. Without a childhood to expand on your imagination, one did tend to put the effort elsewhere, and David was a very convincing liar after all of the practice he had been given.

When he reached to his side to pull one of his guns, the crowd took a step back. The girl, sensing that she was about to leave this horrible place once and for all, put forth the effort to open her eyes and stare at him. He recognized the look in her eyes, the _longing_. Death was the only way she would ever find peace now.

So he raised his arm, placing the tip of his gun against her forehead, and he fired a single bullet. Bits of skull and brain splattered into the air and fell into the fountain nearby. The gunslinger's face was a wild painting of murder and violence, the blood on his skin not his own, but the girl could rest now. Whatever they did with her body now, she wouldn't endure it firsthand.

Standing up, David holstered his weapon and turned to walk back through the pathway the crowd had never quite closed off. "Burn her," he commented casually, and they cheered and went to do just that.

When he got back to his horse, he lifted his shirt to clean the blood from his face and arms, and only here-where no one else could see him-did he dare show just how affected by that young girl's death he was. He hardly considered himself the cause given the condition she was in when he found her, but that didn't make it any easier to walk away knowing she had been killed because of magic.

She had reminded David of someone he'd known years ago. The memory was faint, like a half-remembered dream, but there and ever present in his mind.

"Why did you do that, gunslinger?"

He turned towards the sound of the voice, staring at the source with an expression that was once more indifferent. It was tragic how quickly he could shut off his emotions.

"Practicing magic is forbidden," he replied, and his voice was that scruffy, strained sound he'd spoken to the barn owner with-and for a moment the woman seemed startled by his English accent. But she recovered quickly, giving him a glare as if to ask, 'Seriously?' he added, "No matter your age."

"How do you know she was really a witch?" She asked him.

"She had a wand," David replied. "What was bloody left of it anyway."

There was an uncomfortable silence as they both paused and stared at the other, this stranger judging him for killing a child, and David finding it difficult to blame her. The fact remained, however, that in the end he had been more merciful to her than the rest of the town would have.

The faint smell of smoke and fire was an instant reminder of this.

Eager as he was to leave, there was something about this woman that kept David from turning his back on her. The gunslinger was hardly afraid of her, more _cautious _instead, maybe even a little bit curious as well.

"So that's it then? You ride into town like a cliché Western, kill one of our children, then leave without a word?" the woman asked.

It was in this moment that David realized the woman who spoke to him was the girl's mother. He should have seen it before, the way she carried herself, the way she looked at him. He could see now that her look wasn't angry.

Behind her eyes was a silent thank you.

He simply nodded before finally turning to climb onto his horse. The woman didn't argue with him as he rode away from her.

* * *

><p>She had seen everything from where she was in a nearby alley. The fountain would forever haunt her nightmares, and the situation only seemed worse to her when she saw the gunslinger walking towards her and recognized him.<p>

Waiting until he was a few blocks away from the girl's mother, Hermione finally called out, "Gunslinger!"

He glanced over his shoulder, the horse pausing mid-walk for a moment before he started forward once more.

So she tried again, this time with a different tactic, one that was sure to get his attention-and hopefully not the attention of anyone else nearby. "_DRACO_!"

The horse froze, and very slowly, David climbed off and turned to look at Hermione. He studied her features for a moment, eyes tracing the details of her face until a look of recognition crossed his own.

"No one has called me that in years," he replied.

His voice, so coarse and forced, as if speaking was difficult for him, it caught her off guard. This clearly was not the Draco Malfoy she had known as a girl. To say she had never been curious as to what had happened to him after that day would have been a lie, but she had never imagined anything quite like this.

The man standing in front of her was dressed entirely as a muggle, from the blood-stained shirt to the simply jeans, down to the all-star sneakers-perhaps the only thing about his outfit that did not scream John Wayne-revealed to be as worn as the leather jacket he had on. He had transformed himself entirely.

Hermione had done much the same herself, dying her hair red these days and keeping it longer than she had in school. They were wanted, after all. Prominent figures in the wizarding world had been catalogued and hunted.

They lived their lives in hiding.

And yet, she still could not believe what lengths Draco had gone to in order to shed his former Malfoy persona. The only thing that remained the same was his eyes. Those two very blue eyes that had once looked at her with disgust and hate, now filled with…well, nothing. He seemed entirely indifferent to her presence even if he had recognized her.

"I suppose it is an odd name to call someone these days," Hermione finally replied, after she realized she had been standing there staring at him. His name, more than anything, would have given him away as a wizard. She had the luxury of not worrying about that bit of it all.

"I must admit, out of the three of you, it doesn't surprise me a bit that you were the one to survive, Granger," he commented casually. There was the unspoken agreement that Harry was still alive, but an understanding had passed between their expressions that gave away the fact that Ron hadn't.

"The bombs took a lot of lives that day," Hermione replied carefully. If they were overheard saying the wrong things, well it was all over for them wasn't it? And she would not allow herself to be killed in the company of a Malfoy, no matter how different he seemed.

And yet, there were so few left from her old world that she found herself inviting him over before she could think about the words. "You must be hungry, Gunslinger. Anyone who kills a witch deserves a free meal."

There was a heaviness to her words, an unspoken acknowledgement that he'd done what he had to, what was best for the girl, and Hermione did not judge him for it.

"You live near here?" he asked her, glancing around. After a moment Hermione realized that his eyes, while they seemed casual, were ever vigilent in scanning his surroundings for the approach of any unwanted company. _So _much had changed about him, so fucking much.

"It'll be faster on your horse," Hermione told him, and Draco nodded, motioning for her to make her way over to him.

* * *

><p>They said nothing on the ride there, and Draco thought to himself that this was a small kindness on her part. Conversation between them had never been friendly, and what did they have to talk about now that wasn't death and violence and loss?<p>

The bombs had united the wizarding world, forcing those few left to stick together, but he'd avoided them. He'd disappeared among the muggle population until today.

High in the sky by the time they reached Hermione's humble home, the sun revealed that it was already near noon. The Forbidden City looming ever closer attested to this time table, telling him he'd traveled farther than he'd originally thought in that morning.

Only to be sidetracked now by an old…well she had never been his friend, had she? What they were now was beyond him. At the most, he figured, a shaky alliance had been formed between them when Hermione witnessed him putting the girl out of her misery.

So strange that a murder for which he would have been called a monster years before now made him a hero. This was the world they lived in now.

Climbing down, he helped her off of the horse and ground tied the animal nearby where it could munch on the weeds and grass that grew in the front yard of her home.

She said nothing still as she opened the door and led him inside. What had appeared to be a simply shack outside was revealed to be quite a bit more like a two-room cottage inside. "It's enchanted," she explained casually, "but only for the two of us. Should anyone else try to come in all they see is an empty shack."

"You don't live here alone?" he asked her. Hadn't she lost all of her friends that day too?

Apparently not.

"Wood's at work," Hermione told him, turning around to face him as she spoke. "He's a Gatherer." Gatherers was the name humanity had given to men paid to make their way through the heaps of debris that had once been neighborhoods to find anything valuable. Outside of Executioner, it was the only 'respectable' job you could hold now.

"Wood?" Draco asked her, looking confused.

"Oliver," Hermione replied, looking a bit embarrassed that she hadn't told him that right off.

Oh right. Oliver Wood. Gods what Draco wouldn't have given to knock the bloody Gryffindor captain down a few notches back in the day. But now he was indifferent towards Wood.

"You and he-?" Draco asked, biting his tongue to keep from finishing that question. There was a time when he would have tried his best to make her uncomfortable, but that time was long gone. Now he realized he needed all of the allies he could get.

"Yes," Hermione answered simply, making her way towards the kitchen. "Sit down," she added, motioning towards the small table on her way, "I'll make you some tea, and you can tell me where you were off to."

Despite the fact that an order from Granger made him a bit annoyed, he made his way over towards the table. Out of respect, he took his belts off, setting them on the table where she could keep an eye on the guns. Not that he needed them around her.

Next, he reached over his shoulder and into the back of his jacket against his neck, pulling his wand out. The leather jacket had fallen into his care soon after the bombs fell, and he'd immediately adapted it to hold his wand with a simply pocket enchanted there. Should anyone take his jacket they wouldn't see it. The wand-which had once belonged to his father-answered only to him and remained hidden from anyone else.

But he had a feeling that Hermione would appreciate knowing where it was.

Glancing at her, their gaze locked for a moment before she lifted the side of her shirt just enough to take her own wand out, setting it on the countertop near the stove. "It's been a long time since I could do that around anyone other than Oliver," she commented, glancing at his wand before looking back at him. "How are you, Draco?"

He nearly laughed at that question.


	5. Interlude 2

**Interlude 2**

_How do you explain to someone that you're never going to be okay? How do you explain it to someone you once hated completely, someone you've insulted more times than you can count, someone you always had a degree of respect for because of her magical talent but kept this opinion to yourself so as to assure your own survival?_

_I don't know exactly what she expected me to say, but I'm almost sure it wasn't the answer that I did give her. Looking back on it now, it seems foolish to have been hesitant to tell her anything, but you have to understand that at the time we hadn't seen each other since the bombs fell, and before this world we'd been enemies in another._

_It's funny how things turn out, isn't it?_


	6. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_**"I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silent hurt more."**_

— _**C. S. Lewis**_

How was he? Where did he begin to answer that question? How much should he tell her, and how much should he keep to himself?

Bringing his left arm up to rest on the table, he carefully pulled back the sleeve of his jacket, revealing half of the Dark Mark on his skin. For a moment Draco just stared at it in silence, and then he glanced at her. "I'm alive," Draco replied.

"I can see that," she replied somewhat sarcastically. "I meant…how have things been for you? You've obviously adapted well."

"So have you," he pointed out, uncomfortable with the focus being so completely on him.

"That's not-" She sighed, sounding frustrating as she added, "Must you always be this difficult? I thought maybe you'd grown out of it by now…"

"What do you want from me, Granger?" he asked, staring into her eyes. "Some kind of bleedin' sob story about where I was when the bombs fell and how it affected my mental health?" She seemed a bit startled by his question, but he didn't give her too much time to think on it. "We all have sob stories about that day. Sharing them doesn't change anything aside from making us feel sorry for ourselves, and if there is anything we cannot risk these days it's pity. Now you've made a happy little home here-good for you-but not all of us were that fortunate, and I'm not about to spill all of my secrets simply to satisfy your morbid curiosity, alright?"

And now she looked almost embarrassed, as if she hadn't considered that point of view before. "You're wrong, you know," Hermione insisted, turning back to stir the tea on the stove. "This may be a home, but I live in the same world you do now, _Gunslinger_, and it's anything but happy."

He glanced at his guns now, taking comfort in the familiar curves of the weapons. They had never let him down, never failed him, but this was only a small comfort around the likes of Hermione Granger. Everything about her reminded him of who he had once been.

And that Draco was someone he had tried his best to forget.

But sins, like disease, always come back and multiply. Eyes moving to the tattoo that was still revealed beneath the pulled back sleeve, he reached over to bring the jacket back down to cover it. "I feel him sometimes," Draco commented. "It's always weak, always brief, but it's there, and in those moments I know that he's still alive. The skies burned and yet Lord Voldemort lived on. How is there any justice in that?"

Hermione poured them some tea, bringing the mugs over to set one in front of him. She took a seat opposite where he was, staring at him for a moment before taking a sip of her tea. "I never knew that about the Dark Marks," she confessed.

"Knew what? That they fucking connect us to him? I used to convince myself that it was the reason my father and aunt and all the others were so bloody insane, because normal wizards and witches can't possibly want to do those kinds of things to others, right? But it turns out that it doesn't quite work that way. I can feel him, but only just. It's like…staring at a scene through stained glass. You get the image, but it's distorted," he explained.

He didn't tell her about the nightmares. Part of him assumed she wouldn't care, and the rest of him simply didn't want to talk about it.

"What's this then-" Oliver had his wand out and aimed at Draco in an instant, and Hermione barely flinched.

"It's alright," she simply told him, sounding tired now more than anything. "He's not here to hurt us. I invited him here." And when Oliver turned his gaze towards her, he looked both confused and betrayed, but he lowered his wand.

"That's Draco bloody Malfoy," he reminded her darkly.

"Yes," Hermione agreed, "but we're all on the same side now."

Oliver walked around to take a seat in the chair beside Hermione, reaching for her hand almost as if to assure himself that she was really there, but never taking his eyes off of Draco. "Are we?" he asked the other wizard.

"Are there sides anymore?" Draco asked him in reply. "We're a dying breed."

"He gave Annette's girl a mercy shot," Hermione explained gently, glancing at Oliver. A mercy shot, an end to suffering. Lawmen and gunslingers were known to have both the privilege and _responsibility _of carrying out this shot. If a man could carry and aim a gun, he was viewed as worthy in this new world where violence begat survival. If a 'normal' person, an average citizen tried to step in, they were stopped. But lawmen and gunslingers were not to be argued with.

And while Draco had never enforced this particular unspoken rule, he did use it to his advantage to help witches and wizards caught by the public.

"They discovered her?" Oliver asked, seeming more surprised by this news than the fact that Draco had put her out of her misery.

"Poor thing dropped her wand," Hermione explained sadly.

Oliver turned his gaze back towards Draco, studying the hardened lines of his features, the proof that the last few years had aged him-hell, had aged them all-considerably. "Why are you here, Malfoy?"

It was a simple question, and one that Hermione hadn't thought to ask him yet. She looked at him now, eyes narrowed a bit as if she suddenly realized this, and silently waited for his answer.

"There's a whispered rumor that Hogwart's is being rebuilt," he commented, attempting to keep his tone casual. It came out more as hopeful though, a brief glance at how Draco Malfoy had always viewed the school as a safe place. "I'm off to see if there's any truth to this rumor."

Oliver looked shocked, and Hermione just looked confused. "Being rebuilt? By whom?" she asked him.

"I don't know the specifics, Granger, that's part of the reason I'm going," he explained.

"Her name is Hermione," Oliver insisted, glaring at Draco a bit, while she, herself, seemed indifferent to it.

"But you can't go to where Hogwart's was, Draco," she insisted, staring at him as if he should have known this. "You'd have to travel through the Forbidden City, and that's just not worth the trouble of…"

"Isn't it?" Draco asked her, interrupting her comments.

* * *

><p>Hermione paused, staring at him in surprise. For the first time since meeting Draco as a girl, she was seeing something in his expression now that proved he had not only liked but probably enjoyed his time at Hogwart's. He had always been so vocal about hating the place, hating the other students, but she saw that as a lie now in his expression and tone as he insisted with a passion she'd never heard his voice take on before that the school was worth whatever dangers he had to travel past.<p>

"Think about it," he continued, staring at them both with intensely focused eyes-this was an argument he wanted them to _listen _to, not dismiss. "If the school is being rebuilt it means that there are more of us out there, enough of us to actually make a bloody difference in this world and maybe even take back the part of it that was once ours," Draco told them. "If we can show the world that there is a place where magic can be learned properly, maybe we can begin to make them understand that coexistence is not a thing of the past. We shouldn't have to fucking hide what we are. We never should have to begin with."

Considering that for a moment, Hermione took another sip of her tea, and as she lowered the cup she felt her own lips curl into a slight smile.

"You think this is funny?" Draco demanded, glaring at her.

"Not at all," she insisted quickly. "It's just…you, of all people, preaching about coexistence? It only took nuclear war for you to see the truth behind it, but I'm glad you finally have."

"What you saw of me back then was only a glimpse, the surface of the bloody iceberg, Granger. Don't pretend to fucking know me or my motives, and never again suggest you know my opinion on such a matter. What a man says and what he feels are often two very different things, because this world expects certain things from all of us," he told her.

It sounded so…mature, so grown up, that Hermione almost couldn't believe Draco Malfoy was saying these things to her now. Because he was right-and this was something she'd learned from Ron and Harry about men saying one thing but feeling another. Staring at the former Slytherin goldenboy, she considered for the first time that his participation in the ranks of the Death Eaters may not have been purely voluntary. Like the heir to any throne, certain things had been required of Draco, and he probably would have been punished had he attempted to defy what was expected of him. Only now, in a world completely turned over by manmade weapons was Draco Malfoy free to be his own person.

And even this world had forced him to take on a persona that probably wasn't his true personality.

"You can't go alone," she announced suddenly.

"Now wait second-" Oliver started to argue, looking not only as if he'd been taken off guard but downright disgusted by what she was about to suggest.

"I'll go with you," Hermione added, keeping her gaze on the gunslinger who sat across from her. A silent understanding passed between them, and with it a realization that they truly _were _on the same side.

"You can't be serious," Oliver argued.

Hermione glanced at him, squeezing his hand gently. "What are we doing here other than surviving?" she asked him sadly. "I spent my entire childhood wishing for a normal, uneventful life, and now that I have it I feel as if I'm dishonoring the memories of all of those who fell in the name of the war we were once forced to be a part of. I need to do something with purpose again, Oliver. I need to know that I've made a difference beyond just simply existing." She searched his eyes for any clues that he understood what she was telling him, and when his expression softened, Hermione realized that even if he didn't understand he was going to follow her. Because he loved her.

"We can leave in the morning," Oliver finally commented, glancing back at Draco. "I assume you're alright with sleeping on the floor?" His tone was a bit sarcastic, if not amused, given Draco's former lifestyle before the bombs.

"I've slept on much worse," he assured them both.

"We'll leave at sunrise then," Hermione concluded.

* * *

><p>Sleep was difficult to come by for him, always had been, but as a gunslinger he had even more horrible memories that could translate in his mind as nightmares. With his horse tied outside, he'd brought the saddle in to lay his head on it, and now stared up at the ceiling of the humble home Hermione and Oliver had created for themselves.<p>

In a lot of ways he envied them.

Even if they found the school being rebuilt he'd done far too much to ever be welcomed back into the wizarding world. Not to mention his continued connection to the Dark Lord through the mark on his arm. The only reason he had yet to attempt to get rid of the Dark Mark was that should Voldemort get close enough, he would sense it. It was, unfortunately for Voldemort, an early warning sign to his followers that he was near. Clearly he hadn't thought that bit through.

But then there was a lot Tom hadn't thought through, and over the years Draco had realized this.

His parents had been sheep. His aunt had just been crazy. And the others? Well most of them were driven by fear and hope of survival, or just plain cowardice.

Those days were gone now. With Potter and Voldemort both missing, the war was on an indefinite hiatus.

And yet it loomed in the back of Draco's mind, ever present, ever demanding his thoughts and attention, always asking the question: _what if they come back? What if the fighting begins again? You're a changed man now, _David_. Who will you side with in a wizarding war you no longer have the same motivations against?_

The answer was always a shouted, 'I don't fucking know!'

Now, lying there in the silence, he heard this argument yet again, but for the first time since that fateful day that changed everyone's world through nuclear carnage, he leaned more towards fighting on the _good _side. Because the good side had people like Granger-who as smart as she was, wasn't above humbling herself enough to offer an old enemy her help-and people like Wood-who fought to protect the people they'd come to love not because it was expected of them, but because they simply could not imagine standing by and watching it happen without them.

The world had changed on the Day of Fire, but even more than that, _they _had all changed with it.

Eventually he drifted off to sleep a few hours before dawn, the last coherent thought running through his mind the realization that they only had one horse among the three of them.


	7. Interlude 3

**Interlude 3**

_The greatest thing I learned at Hogwart's wasn't a spell or incantation, or even a potion despite Snape's insistence that his class was the most important. Of all the books I buried my nose in, all of the history I read up on, nothing prepared me for the world as it is today quite like the war. Some would say I should thank the Death Eaters for those experiences, that I grew from them, but the truth is that learning firsthand what prejudice and hate can turn good men into was not a pleasant experience no matter what I gained from it._

_I lost a lot of friends thanks to Voldemort._

_My parents never had any idea of what was really going on when they died. I never got to explain to them why I was always so stressed or frantic, why I left the muggle world to focus on fighting wizards way more experienced than I was for a friend who had an eerie connection with one of them. I never actually explained dark magics to my parents. I didn't want them to know it existed._

_But the truth is that men, even without magic, can be absolutely horrible to each other. These experiences that had torn my life apart had also prepared me to survive in the world after the Day of Fire. _


	8. Chapter 4

NOTES: Please forgive any 3am typos. I will be rereading and editing tomorrow, I just wanted to get this up before bed!

**Chapter 4**

"_**It's been long since I've lost all fears and concerns. I don't worry, I calculate." ~ Alexander Lebed **_

The gunslinger's eyes scanned the horizon once more. He woke up with the sun, had for years now, and although the breathtaking sight of the natural light spilling out over the remains of the Forbidden City should have been considered beautiful, to him it was simply a sign of things to come. They had a good solid 10 hours of daylight before the sun began to hide its face, and in the darkness was where the City came to life.

During the day it was simply a pathetic dead thing, lying there with the clever disguise of long abandoned ruins.

Draco had been to the city only once since the bombs fell. He had a scar on his right shoulder from it, a scar he hadn't dared heal with magic at the time. He hadn't gotten to a safe place where magic was possible until the wound closed up in an ugly, jagged line. Now it was a constant reminder, and on some nights when it got extremely cold, the scar _ached_.

He glanced at his horse, lazily grazing surrounding patches of grass. The animal knew that something was about to happen, for while its attention seemed to be on the food it tore out of the ground, its eyes constantly scanned the area and the ears were ever shifting at sounds no human could possibly hear. Animals were intuitive-this was something he'd learned even back at Hogwart's thanks to Filch's fucking cat. And the owls. Merlin, he missed the owls. Who would have thought he'd miss them? Hunted like the wizards themselves, they were considered a tool of magic, and therefore destroying them to the point of extinction was considered the best form of confiscation. After all, the wizard who couldn't communicate with other wizards was less likely to cause an uprising.

Draco pulled his gun from his left holster, flicking the cylinder out to check the ammunition again. It was filled completely, six shining bullets there inside the cylinder they were designed for, but over the years Draco had learned that one could never be too sure of whether their weapon was loaded or not. Holstering it, he took his other gun out, giving it the same careful attention before holstering it again.

"Where did you get them?"

Her voice should have startled him, but he hardly seemed to react, gaze still on the sunrise. "Does it matter?" Draco finally asked, glancing at her.

"I suppose not," Hermione agreed. "I was just curious."

"They were a gift from a friend," he admitted, and it was clear in his tone that this was _all _he was going to tell her about the matter. "Don't look so surprised, Granger, I do have friends." They were few in number and even fewer in surviving count, but that was entirely beside the point. She didn't need to know that he hadn't had anyone to consider a real friend until after the bombs fell.

Before that it had been difficult to tell if someone was befriending him out of fear or the desire to get in a Malfoy's good graces to work through the ranks towards Voldemort's favor.

And then there had been the girls. Like Pansy. Fucking Pansy. She'd taught him a lot of things without even meaning to, lessons he kept in mind still today.

Lessons that weren't needed around Granger.

As his thoughts turned to the face of the friend who had given him the weapons he held so dearly, Draco almost welcomed Wood's annoying voice as interruption when he walked outside. "One horse?" he asked.

"Unless you've got a couple hiding around here," Draco replied with dry sarcasm. Humor had all but left his personality over the last few years, but there was something about being around an old rival that brought it out. He could only imagine what being around Potter would bring out in him.

"We'll take the brooms," Wood commented, glancing at Hermione now.

"You know they're illegal," she reminded him with a sigh, already sounding tired. Was it possible that just the thought of their journey was tiring her? If that was the case, she wasn't going to last too long, so Draco decided right then and there to not depend on her too much.

That had always been Potter and Weasel's biggest mistake.

"Once we're inside the city borders there will be no one there to enforce that rule," Wood argued, moving back into the small house to fetch whatever brooms he and Hermione had managed to keep over the years.

"He's right," Draco commented casually, putting his focus on his guns as he holstered them and made sure his belts were positioned to make the weapons easy to reach. "Dementors don't give a damn about magic use."

"So it's true then?" she asked him, folding her arms in front of her. "They've taken over the city?"

"Parts of it," he replied, moving towards his horse to check on the saddle. Everything seemed to be in place, but he felt the need to recheck it all just in case. It also kept him too busy to look directly at Hermione as he explained, "Muggles couldn't kill them, so they let them have free reign of London, but the Dementors have only taken parts of it, and they're not the worse thing there."

"How do you-you've been there, haven't you?"

He almost smiled at the fact that she was only just coming to this realization, but in the end the fearful expression on her face made him pause. "Yes," Draco replied. "Same friend of mine who gave me my guns went in looking for someone she cared about," he explained.

"She?" Hermione asked. But on this, Draco wasn't going to budge. He'd had enough personal talk for one morning, and gratefully Oliver walked back out just in time again, carrying two old brooms.

"They're not much, but they'll fly," he explained.

"I'll tie them to the left of my horse," Draco offered. "They never look over there." Oliver nodded but was ultimately hesitant to actually give the brooms up. "Oh come on!" Draco snapped. "Worst case scenario, I end up being burned alive after they catch _me _with them instead of you," he pointed out.

He handed the brooms over, and ten minutes later they were securely fastened against the left side of his horse. Glancing at the two of them, Draco looked at Hermione. "Have you ever ridden a horse before, Granger?" Wood opened his mouth to correct him on her name again, but Hermione cut him off.

"Once or twice," she replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because the only way this isn't going to seem suspicious is if you ride it and we walk," he replied. "Our story is simple-you're sick, and we need to get to the other side for medicine."

It was a believable story only because medicine was hard to come by these days, and what was left lied somewhere within the Forbidden City. People had suffered horrible deaths in an attempt to find the medications they needed, but with a gunslinger these two would appear to actually have a chance. Unlike most who asked for entrance to the city.

The guards were forever suspicious. If a gunslinger were to ride his own horse and make a woman walk, it would only make them ask more questions. So she would have to ride.

"Once we're past the guards, you can ride your soddin' broom," Draco added, "but in the meantime…"

"Alright," she replied, making her way towards the animal.

This was how they found themselves coming upon the dark entrance to the Forbidden City and hour later. The guards did not immediately show themselves, but they made their presence known from the tower to their right with a siren that fired off noise so loud it startled the horse for a moment and caused the three of them to cover their ears until it passed.

The large, tattooed man who walked out to meet them carried an axe with him that he rested on his shoulder. His walk was forced, with a slight limp on his left leg that hinted towards an old injury of some sort that had never quite healed. His face was scarred, and where it wasn't scarred inked images and words took up the space of skin that would have otherwise been clear.

After the bombs fell, escaped prisoners had taken over London. Over the years they had gained a reputation for brutally keeping "normal" folk out of the city, becoming extremely territorial over it. It was commonly accepted that should you ask for entrance to the city, you would have to pay a toll of some sort, and anyone who tried otherwise was violently cut down and made an example of. The Guards-as they'd ironically come to be known-were infamous for torturing their victim and dismembering the bodies to send back to relatives as a reminder. If there was no family left, they kept the bodies visible for any approaching public.

There were two corpses hanging from the tower the Guard had come from even now. One was missing an arm and nearly skeletal, but the other was fresh enough that his eyes had only just melted a week or so before and his purple skin was only beginning to dry out in the sunlight. Death was the most abrupt of reminders and it faced them now openly.

"You seek passage, Gunslinger?" the Guard asked, speaking to Draco while he kept his gaze flickering to Hermione and Oliver.

"I do," Draco replied. He kept his tone indifferent, calculated to sound like a man without any emotional attachment to the situation. If the Guard thought they were too desperate to enter the city, the price would go up.

"You have payment?" The tattooed man glanced at Hermione as if to ask if she was the payment, and Oliver glared at him before instinctively moving to stand in front of the horse.

* * *

><p>Hermione watched nervously from where she sat on the horse. Although Draco had clearly grown and matured over the years, it made her nervous that the Guard-an ugly man with a fowl stench about him that reminded her of the few trolls she'd run into in her lifetime-was speaking only to him. Of course a gunslinger would always demand attention in a situation like this, but the difference here was that this particular gunslinger had once been an enemy.<p>

Part of her wondered if he still was.

"Of course," Draco finally replied to the Guard, before turning to make his way towards the horse she sat on now. The Guard tensed, gripping the axe he held a bit tighter as he watched.

Draco returned with something wrapped up in an old cloth. Unfolding the dirty material, he revealed a vial of some sort and held it out towards the Guard, who stared at it in suspicion.

"Is this some kind of magical potion?" While the Guards themselves hated everyone equally, they were not above turning in a suspected witch or wizard for reward, and even Oliver tensed a bit at this question.

But Draco remained not only calm, but slightly amused it seemed, smiling as he looked at the other man. "If you can call perfume a potion," he replied in an almost playful tone. "I suppose it's bewitched a thousand men over before, but the woman who once wore it is no longer in need of the scent, and I assumed that a man such as yourself-" Draco glanced towards the decaying bodies tied to the tower behind him, "-would appreciate a change in pace."

And such a gift was rare these days. Hermione bit her bottom lip as she watched, wondering where Draco had gotten the perfume, if he'd killed to get it, and who this woman the wizard kept referring to was.

"What is your reason for entering the city?" the Guard asked, taking the small vial now to study it.

"My sister is sick," Draco replied. "Sick enough to need medications that can't be found here. Her husband has asked that I escort them to find the supplies they seek."

The lie startled her so much that Hermione very nearly corrected him, but when the Guard turned his ugly gaze to her, she nodded.

The Guard glanced at the three of them, then brought the axe away from his shoulder. "You may pass," he told them, carefully gripping the weapon as he watched them walk past him.

Getting past the Guard had been nerve-wracking, but it was hardly the worse thing they were to face today, and Hermione was filled with a sense of dread as they finally put some distance between themselves and the city's border.

There was no going back now.

* * *

><p>"Who was she?" Oliver asked after a while, breaking the darkened silence. They had walked for nearly ten minutes through the debri-filled streets of what had once been downtown London without saying a word. The silence was overwhelmingly stressful, and while Hermione seemed relieved that someone had finally spoken, Draco showed no emotion one way or another.<p>

In fact, he nearly insisted on more silence. It would keep them alive longer. But chances were the Dementors already knew they were there, and they were merely biding their time until the sun set.

And he was tired of them staring at him strangely every time he mentioned that he'd actually had a friend in the past.

"You know who," Draco commented.

"Pansy?" Hermione guessed, and Draco actually laughed and stopped walking altogether for a moment.

"Even nuclear war couldn't make me care for her, Granger," Draco assured the witch, glancing at her where she sat on his horse.

"Then who?" Hermione asked, annoyed that he wasn't simply answering her.

"Who was the last person you saw me with?" Draco asked.

Silence fell again, and Hermione seemed to think about this for the longest time before realization crossed her features. "No…" she whispered. "She would never-"

"Trouble," Oliver commented, breaking off the conversation as he pointed towards a group of people approaching them. While many of the prisoners had become the Guards, some had broken off and created gangs, taking in survivors that were tough enough to live up to their lifestyle.

The men that approached them now had the look of one of those gangs, markings on their face in make-up to signify who they represented. The symbols meant nothing to Draco.

His hands moved to rest on his guns, and he waited until they were within speaking distance to call out to them. "We don't want any trouble, and we're not here to take your territory," he assured them. "We simply want to pass through." Behind him, Hermione climbed off of the horse and moved to stand near Oliver.

What happened next happened so quickly that Oliver wasn't even aware of what was going on until the red spot on his shirt began to grow. All he knew was that he had just witness Draco Malfoy drawing his weapons and shooting the man who had shot at them all within a matter of seconds.

When one of the other men reached for his gun, Hermione's voice rang out from behind both Oliver and Draco. "_Protego Maxima_!" Wand out, the shield that formed around the three of them stopped the bullet, disintegrating it on contact. The gang stood there, staring at her in disbelief, and both Oliver and Draco seemed just as surprised.

"Forbidden City," she reminded them. "Different rules." And then she turned towards Oliver, helping him stand as the sudden loss of blood caused him to become weak.

"There are no rules in this city, witch," the gang leader muttered, directly before all hell broke loose.


End file.
